


Slow Explosions

by andthentherewere



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Mild Angst, Some moderately graphic depictions of gore, between himself and the rest of the people in the universe, jonny is not dealing particularly well with living for as long as he has (and will), so he decides there should be some differences, strong denial, sure, vignettes loosely dropped into an overarching mood?, ”major character death” well that’s just another day aboard the aurora
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:01:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23528821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andthentherewere/pseuds/andthentherewere
Summary: Jonny thinks love is for nerds but he’s about to play himselfHis friends are too fun
Relationships: Nastya/Aurora (not a ton though)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 59





	Slow Explosions

**Author's Note:**

> The scene with Marius is the Gross One (since he’s the doctor). If you want to skip it, it comes after Ivy’s  
> (this is my first fic i’ve ever put on here in my life, please let me know if i tagged correctly and rated correctly and whatnot, thank you!)

They were all so soppy. All the people who weren’t real. They didn’t have enough time, so they made up for it with extreme excess.  
Love was excessive. So powerful, so filling, it lifted you while it crushed you, and the people who didn’t live long enough to be real used it to pretend for a little while. Love, and terror, and misery. Such sharp little spikes of feeling.  
Jonny used to need that. Then he lived, and lived, and lived. And he realized that everyone else was fake. They couldn’t live. They weren’t real. But he was real. And so, he didn’t need those messy little spikes. Which was good. He wasn’t sure if they worked in him anymore.  
He hated the other real people. Hatred was a nice, steady constant. A real feeling that could last. If he had been stood at the helm of creation and asked to pick which of the fake people to make real, he wouldn’t have picked them. But here they all were, and he didn’t have any other choice but them. So he allowed them to remain on his ship.  
Not his ship. Everyone was quite clear about that. Including the ship herself.  
He hated them. Of course he did. So it was hard to reconcile why he hated it worse if something tried to hurt them. Sour, and heavy. But no, he knew, it was just the insult. The fake people were an insult, thinking they could attack the only real people in existence and avoid his wrath. He was the captain. He would never let someone who wasn’t even real hurt his crew. Didn’t mean he didn’t still hate them.  
Not the captain, either. Apparently. Agree to disagree. Or maybe agree to a kneecapping.  
He hated them all. 

The fire burned in Ashes’ eyes and glinted off their lipstick. Jonny hooted and leaped around them, punching the air in delight as the museum burned.  
“Thirteen hundred years of history!” he yelled. “Gone like it never happened!”  
“I’m definitely taking some of those stories,” Ashes said.  
As Jonny passed he grabbed them and spun them both in a circle. Ashes chuckled.  
“On a planet too small to keep more than one record,” they started to sing, “the leviathans once ran free; the men of the four greatest clans of their world could not be made to see!”  
Jonny wailed a gleeful countermelody as Ashes hammered out the first verse. A good story. Now floating in little sparks up to the stars. 

“Tell me this, then: not even for a real set of hands?” Jonny asked, leaning forward in his chair, one elbow on his knees, both of his own hands held out to Brian in disbelief.  
“At the moment, no. I would not ‘explode’ this metaphorical town, not for any amount of a real body.”  
Jonny sighed to the ground, his whole body falling forward.  
“Now, on the other hand,” Brian said, and Jonny looked up to see his hand retreating from the back of his neck, “tell me about this town. Are there... obstacles inside to be removed?”  
Jonny sat back in his chair.  
“There are always obstacles to a decent pair of hands,” he smiled, and Brian nodded, squeezing his palm in his fingers.  
“In that case...”

“Come on Ivy!” Jonny griped, pushing a stack of books onto the floor.  
Ivy narrowed her eyes and turned the page.  
“I’m not speaking to you unless you pick those up,” she said, eyes back on her book.  
Jonny growled and kicked them across the room.  
“Just tell me if you found anything interesting!”  
Ivy raised her eyebrows.  
Jonny cursed and shot the wall. Then he grabbed the books up by crumpled pages and sat them back on the desk.  
Ivy shut her book with a nod.  
“Three new stories. All will make excellent songs. It should raise our legitimate profit by thirty percent on all worlds with a concept of revenge.”  
Jonny grinned and dropped into a chair, flipping his gun around in circles.  
“That’s all the worlds that matter.”  
Ivy twitched a smile.  
“And they will guarantee a rise in crime on all worlds without a concept of revenge by at least twelve percent.”  
Jonny chuckled.  
“And where can we find such worlds?”  
To his delight, Ivy pulled a small sheet of paper from her pocket.  
“I already have a list.”

“Think you can get it to stay?” Jonny asked, shirt ripped down the side by one of the blades from the tavern below. Marius poked at the long gash across his ribs.  
“I’ve been trying for a very long time,” Marius sighed, “and i’ve never gotten something this big to scar.”  
Jonny let his shirt drop back.  
“Shit. Looks cool like this.”  
“I can try again,” Marius said, scratching his cheek. He pulled up Jonny’s shirt to stare. “Never tried lemon juice before... Or maybe some staples?”  
“If you pour lemons on me, i’ll kill us both,” Jonny warned.  
“Staples it is!” Marius said, marching to the counter and lifting his staple gun. Jonny grunted as he stapled the cut open.  
“Don’t think it’ll work,” Marius said when he was done, pulling at his chin. “Better off killing yourself now and saving you the infection.”  
“Brilliant. See if i ask for your help ever again,” Jonny grumbled.  
“I can draw it on in marker,” Marius said, making a face at Jonny’s side.  
Jonny nodded slowly. He pulled out his gun and pointed it at his own head.  
“I have never heard someone say something so stupid before.”  
When he woke up, he found Marius hovering over him with a red marker, but in the end it didn’t actually look that bad. 

Jonny ducked the frazzled bolt of electricity as Raphaella cackled.  
“Jonny!” she called, hair on end, wingtips ruffled. “I’m about to coat Brian’s face in gold, come watch!”  
Jonny peered from the doorway.  
“He’s looking for that. Well, i say looking.”  
Raphaella bared her teeth.  
“I’ve worked out how to make it last beyond regenerative episodes,” she called, gripping one metal rod on either side of the disembodied face. “Took me a few tries, but this time...”  
“If i come in, will i fall through the floor?”  
“Of course not!” Raphaella’s eyes were wide. “I only enable that trap when i need someone new to work on.”  
Jonny slowly stepped to the table. Gold dust flew along beams of electricity and fell like paint onto the face until Jonny could see the lightning in its eyelids.  
Raphaella dropped the rods and grabbed Jonny’s shoulders, jumping in place.  
“Come on now, i have to give it back and see if it stays!”  
She linked their arms and pulled him away. Jonny smiled and skipped with her as she danced them toward the bridge.  
“Need a gun?” he asked.  
Rahaella laughed.  
“If you wouldn’t mind.”  
“Brian,” Jonny called through the ship, grinning and reaching to his hip. “If you can hear me, i found your face! Come get it!”

“Jonny!” the Toy Soldier said, waving a stiff hand and smiling.  
It was coming for him down the dark hallway. Jonny froze and grabbed at his gun.  
“Please don’t shoot me, Jonny!” it sang in a high voice. “I just wanted to see if you would like to play a game!”  
“Ask someone else. Anyone else,” Jonny warned. It was the middle of the night. “Keep looking until you find someone.”  
“Of course!” it said, turning and jerking like a marionette back the way it came.  
It was horrifying.  
“Wait,” Jonny called. “Do you know where Tim is right now?”  
“Tim is in his room!” the Toy Soldier said.  
Jonny snickered.  
“That walk you do, moving like a puppet? Go walk into his room like that.”  
“Is this a game?” The Toy Soldier tipped its head down to one shoulder.  
“Yeah, it’s called ‘how loud can we make Tim scream?’”  
Very loud. The answer to the game was ‘very loud.’ Jonny cackled and clapped the Toy Soldier on the back as they fled through the ship, dodging unnerved gunfire. 

Nastya sat up and locked her eyes on Jonny’s face. She had been asleep, but she didn’t look it.  
“What?” she asked.  
“Damn thing woke me up,” Jonny said, pressing gingerly at his chest.  
Nastya’s eyes released him, and he dropped his coat on the floor and set himself down at the end of her bunk.  
“Lie down,” she said.  
“No, i’ll just sit for a minute.”  
“Jonny.”  
He sighed and pulled his legs onto the mattress. He scooted up and pressed against the wall.  
“Too loud,” he muttered. “She made it too damn loud.”  
Nastya tucked the blanket between his back and the wall.  
“My love,” she said, pressing her fingertips against the metal wall, and something behind it began to rumble. Low, deep, filling their ears with calm noise.  
“My blood rushes so, through my ears. Aurora knows what to do.” She gave the metal a few gentle pets.  
The wall grumbled against his back, louder than the pounding in his chest.  
Nastya laid back down.  
Jonny fell asleep with Nastya snoring into his face. 

With Tim’s final comment, Marius garroted himself as the table roared with laughter.  
“You can’t get out of it that easy!” Jonny called over the noise, shaking with laughter. Tim leaned forward, cackling at his victory, and Jonny threw an arm around his shoulder.  
“Say it again when he comes back,” Jonny yelled. Tim head-butted him.  
“I’ll get you next, i’ve seen you in a fight, too,” he gloated with a shit eating grin.  
The Toy Soldier laughed a little higher than the rest, practicing how people sound.  
“You don’t hate us all, really!” it said, staring at Jonny.  
The humor left the room with a gasp of silence.  
Jonny‘s laugh broke midstream and he leaned away, withdrawing his arm from Tim’s shoulder. Nastya knocked the Toy Soldier’s leg with a wrench, and Raphaella glared reproachfully.  
Marius blinked and wiped the blood off his neck.  
“The hell killed you lot?” he asked, glancing at Ivy and Ashes.  
“TS can’t read a ruddy room,” Ashes grumbled, throwing their napkin at their plate and lighting it on fire.  
Jonny scoffed and crossed his arms.  
“Don’t think i like you just because i’m stuck with you,” he sneered.  
No one said anything. Marius and Brian each started to, but Brian paused to be polite and Ivy drove her fork into Marius’ hand.  
Well, now this table sucked. Jonny jammed his knife through his plate and stalked out. Someone shouted behind him, and he heard the Toy Soldier’s head shatter into splinters.  
Fuck all of them. He was real. He didn’t need what the false people used. They needed to pretend their useless little lives meant more than short explosions and lonely deaths.  
He was real. He burst over tens of thousands of years.  
It was so long. He didn’t need it to mean anything. His life was enough just by going on for so long.  
He didn’t pick them, anyways. Who would pick these people?  
He knew who. The smartest woman he ever knew. Except for Ivy, and Raphaella, and Nastya. 

Jonny shot each of them a look through the corners of his eyes as they filed into the main room. His heart beat hard against his crossed arms.  
They shot him looks back. Raphaella stuck out her tongue. Nastya rolled her eyes. Ashes narrowed theirs and raised an eyebrow, and Brian nodded, and Ivy gave a little wave. The Toy Soldier gave a big, creaking wave. Marius puffed out his cheeks. Tim showed them all up. He marched over, stood above Jonny, and said something so embarrassing from their Moon War days Jonny had to shoot himself in the head.  
When he came back, they were laughing again. Ashes tossed a flaming playing card at him like a throwing star, and Nastya jerked her head at the open seat beside her.  
Joining them was what a fake person would would do. Someone who needed the spikes of terrible feeling, who clung to them.  
He didn’t need them, he told himself as he slid into the chair next to Nastya. But, he knew with some disappointment and a lot of irritation, he still felt them. 

The ship let out a low groan of some kind of mild distress. He never could keep up with what needed doing around here. Wasn’t his job to make it happen either, so he usually ignored it.  
Jonny liked to hurl his boots at the wall before he went to sleep. Good crash. If one of the buckles hit first, the reverb was sharp in his ears. But now he set them down lightly beside his bed instead. The mechanical groan faded and a gentle rumble buzzed at his feet, below sound.  
“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled, kicking at the rumble with his toes. He really wished the ship wouldn’t make a fuss about it.  
He just hadn’t lived long enough yet.


End file.
